Occupation of Independence

Farmington, NM. Apparently my driveway security services really are in demand, so I'm on the way to Ouray, CO to hold down the driveway for old buddy Mark at Box Canyon Blog . It was enjoyable getting back onto the Colorado Plateau, with its characteristic mesa, butte, and cliff look. It was quite noticeable north of Quemado NM. Noon, Silverton CO . It's fun to hear the train whistle again. It's been several years. I wonder if I should have a rematch with the Bunkhouse ? 5 pm, it's nice to see the mountains again. But I appreciate the flowers and running water even more. I found a deadend gravel road to walk the dogs on. We had to cross a small stream. The water wasn't that cold; this is probably the only time of year when you can say that at 9500 feet. I had to carry my little poodle across -- with his vision and scarediness he might have been washed away!

Datil NM, 7200 feet. Normally late August is a time of jubilation. There are signs of beating another summer. Most people are eager for autumn. But today I had mixed feelings about digging out a winter stocking hat for the dawn dog walk. The memory returned of surviving sub-zero temperatures in my trailer last winter in Silver City. Not this winter. It's funny how important a stocking hat is to a camper. Sometimes I take emergency supplies on my mountain bike; the stocking hat and an emergency rain poncho are the first things I take. But seeing summer temperatures peak and head down is still good news since there are many more places to choose from, at mediocre altitudes.

The dogs and I went exploring the Plains of San Agustin. Wikipedia tells us that it is a graben , like Death Valley. Graben means ditch in German; have some fun ggrrrowling the word out. It is a block of land that sinks between two parallel faults or cracks. Supposedly San Agustin sank 4000 feet, and then filled halfway in with sediment from the nearby mountains.

It's interesting to watch my own habits changing, now that I can't walk five minutes to a grocery store. But at the moment I'm more interested in what effect Bernanke's intentional debasement of the dollar is having on people who live in places an hour drive from the nearest real grocery store. Here in Datil NM we are 60 miles from the nearest one. And yet people still talk about how they drove to the big city last weekend, even though it is 150 miles away. So much of the rural lifestyle involves driving long distances in giant pickup trucks. It's true they do more of the maintenance on vehicles themselves; that helps some, but the nearest real auto parts store is still far away. One tire shop told me he made a run into the big city one day per week to load up on tires. So maybe that's how a lot of survival takes place: you renounce the idea that everything must be available every day of the week. Say, maybe I should do that with the internet. I wonder if

Datil, NM. We crossed the first cattle gate in the national forest this morning and immediately had good luck: a good old boy on an ATV rolled up, with five happy dogs running along side. After disporting with the locals Coffee Girl and I headed off on our first mountain bike ride in this new chapter of our RV camping life. As satisfying as it might have been to successfully adjust to routine rides in Silver City NM, it really is more fun to explore while cycling, that is, to ride where you don't already know the "answer". Now, it was happening again. We followed an informal ATV track uphill; at first it wasn't particularly interesting. Of course it wasn't really supposed to be. There were no brown signs leading us to some official tourist site. But then we found this flower, which grabbed my attention because blue flowers are rare. (The blue is true; no software tricks.) As usual, I want to know it's name, but am too lazy to research it. If a reader know

Whatever you do, don't try to drive a large trailer or Class A motorhome to the old mining town of Mogollon NM. You might possibly make the 9 mile climb of a couple thousand feet, but only if nobody is coming the opposite direction. I made it because it was Thursday and the two businesses in the town were closed, so nobody did come down when I was going up. Once again this shows the advantage of small RVs; I can't wait until mine is less than forty feet long, combined. What a marvelous first impression the old place made. It's in a ravine that wasn't too tight, fortunately. Greenery, running water, and butterflies are everywhere. It would be nice to know some names of these beautiful insects, but when something sounds like a big project it gets put off. This guy looks like a mountain biker doing an end-over: The next impression was just as pleasant: a small, fast-moving stream ran right down Main Street. A small RV could squat overnight on a gravel turnoff a

Well, it didn't take some people very long to adjust to traveling again. Neither dog will permit me to stuff him in the trailer; they insist on being in the van, where the big windows are, this despite the fact that the little poodle (age 16.3) is 90% blind. When we took off this morning, heading through High Lonesome ranch country, it looked great to see how green everything was! Coffee Girl (my Australian kelpie) stuffed her nose into the dashboard vent every few seconds; then she quickly switched over to the window where she shoved half her body out, for yet more exciting new aromas. With great satisfaction, I watched her do this time after time.

It is a good idea to go off on short trips before a long one. Since I haven't done enough of that and since the trailer has barely moved in three years, I feel a bit nervous. But preparation can get a bit tiresome after awhile. At some point you just have to jump in and hang on. Off we go, to the north, through Glenwood. It's hot there, so there won't be any stopping until Reserve, NM. Got to stay above 6000 feet, and 7000 would be more like it. Maybe Datil or Pie Town tonight. So, I'll jerk the cord out of the utility post, and off we go...

A cycling website that I visit frequently mentioned the results of the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. Sigh. Just hearing of Leadville (use Search this Blog on the left) brought back some powerful memories for me. For the first time I started getting emotional about getting back on the road; until now it was hard to believe that I was really leaving tomorrow. A week after the Leadville race, still in the mid-August, I used to notice Leadville (10,200 feet high) getting cooler and foggier. Summer was on the wane, and it was time to start a slow retreat towards winter camp. Many high places in Colorado would still be good until late September. No matter how many years I was traveling, the autumn migration kept bringing a lump to my throat. And now I'm "migrating" north in mid-August? Everything is upside-down.

Here is my first post back on the Verizon network. Gee, I remember it being faster when I dropped the service three years ago. My campground's WiFi is actually twice as fast, even though it is all coming through a 3 Mbps DSL line, and then sharing that signal amongst all the users in the campground.

Straws and camels' backs, indeed. August is not the month when the migrational sap runs in my blood, but when I learned that my boom-da-boom-thud-boom neighbor might renew for another month, the decision became easy. I leave on 18 August. There's nothing wrong with how people live here, if that's what they like. But I have nothing in common with them. Any unpleasantness is my own fault for being in a place I shouldn't be. My 1995 Ford cargo van is all cleaned and waxed up -- beautiful. After three years of weathering in the New Mexican sun, the paint had turned dull and chalky, leaving the water bucket looking like a pail of milk. These cargo vans work so well as towing and storage machines that I wonder why more people don't use them: there are four bicycles and a BOB trailer in there -- and how could a human being live on less?! It has also swallowed up 33 gallons of water, a generator, a wall of supplies in shelves, and it's half empty! Granted, most bou